“Nokia’s decision to switch to Windows Phone for its devices has triggered harsh reactions both from Intel and within Nokia itself,” Electronista reports.
“Intel in a statement said it was ‘disappointed’ with Nokia but said it was ‘not blinking’ on supporting MeeGo,” Electronista reports. “Intel’s loss of Nokia as a phone manufacturer is a major hit to its mobile plans in spite of its response.”
“Reports from Finland have noted that hundreds of Nokia workers, possibly as many as 1,000, have walked out of Nokia’s Tampere office in protest at the decision,” Electronista reports. “Most of them are believed to work on Symbian and are objecting to upcoming job cuts that will almost certainly scale back the software team as Nokia exits Symbian on smartphones. The Tampere office was already expected to be closed, but over half of the 3,000 employees working there are involved in Symbian.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Nokia cuts jobs, slashes R&D; adopts Microsoft’s Windows Phone ’07 in iPhone killer quest – February 11, 2011
boy, how to make a mess of a company in a short time. this is just amazing. is nokia even going to be around in five years?
almost 3,000 people working on Symbian. Seems like they could have churned out something better by now. They went from Nokia to Jokia.
spot on mate, thats what I was thinking
Too many mobile OS in the market already?
Shit Happens, Sometimes®
That’s a helluva lot of people working on Symbian. I wonder how many work on iOS.
So, with protests kicking up, is Nokia the new Egypt?
Let’s hope the protest does not spread to Redmond.
A few days ago I posted this at MDN when Elop was talking about the ‘burning platform’ :
I said:
“We also have to consider the ‘human’ aspects of Nokia’s problems. Big organizations are rife with internal politics and turf wars (prime example Microsoft). Will Nokia execs take it well an outsider (from a rival company no less) tells them basically that their stuff and efforts for the last few years are sh*t (true as it may be)? Bonuses ( a big chunk of senior execs pay.) are tied with performance goals of their departments: now the three year or whatever goal of Meego etc going to be thrown out?
If what happened to other companies before happens to Nokia you will find plenty of backroom infighting in Nokia (even the old Apple had conflicts between the Apple 2 and the Mac guys). Does Elop have the power or charisma to hold the shebang together to do drastic surgery? I think he knows what he faces and memo was the first salvo of his internal PR war.”
—
I guess the internal fight is happening already
a few days ago I posted this here at MDN in the article Elop was talking about the ‘burning platform’:
“We also have to consider the ‘human’ aspects of Nokia’s problems. Big organizations are rife with internal politics and turf wars (prime example Microsoft). Will Nokia execs take it well an outsider (from a rival company no less) tells them basically that their stuff and efforts for the last few years are sh*t (true as it may be)? Bonuses ( a big chunk of senior execs pay.) are tied with performance goals of their departments: now the three year or whatever goal of Meego etc going to be thrown out?
If what happened to other companies before happens to Nokia you will find plenty of backroom infighting in Nokia (even the old Apple had conflicts between the Apple 2 and the Mac guys). Does Elop have the power or charisma to hold the shebang together to do drastic surgery? I think he knows what he faces and memo was the first salvo of his internal PR war.”
—
I guess the internal fight has already started
And in the center of this three thousand strong circle-jerk is a mountain of Mee-goo.
So when the Microsoft deal fails Nokia will not have any software engineers to rebuild.
really, this could end up being the move that makes MS relevant in the future. Amazing to think an eX MS becomes CEO of Nokia and bingo, he invites in his old company for a practical takeover. This is really the very best thing that could have happened to MS. But if this does not work, MS will be in big trouble.
Am I wrong or is MS’s problem NOT that there aren’t manufacturers willing to make Windows Phone 7 handsets? It seems the problem is that the platform is a big “meh” namely because it’s 3-4 years behind its competition in development and ecosystem build-out. There’s lots of yawning going on and Nokia pinning all their hopes and dreams on it seems like a death sentence for both. Flooding the market with phones no one really wants seems like suicide for both of them.
You’re absolutely correct. The dirty secret is that phone manufacturers can easily build phones that can then be final assembled as either Android or WP7.
To date, they’ve been licensing WP7 because they didn’t want to take the chance of being left out. However, the phones haven’t been selling.
Now, manufacturers are faced with the thought of supporting and promoting WP7, or pushing harder with Android with the thought that they could kill Nokia in the process if WP7 fails in the marketplace.
So Microsoft could gain Nokia, but lose most everybody else.
When WP7 fails, Nokia will be dead.
Nokia is going to have a hard time trying to transition customers to WP7 because it’s a whole new product with zero compatibility and offers no advantage
Right, and that’s what MS will do.. brag about the slick hardware… ironic no? ..They get beautiful hardware (nearly identical to that available on Android)..
I guess the ‘live tiles’ thing didn’t go too far in the marketing push… I thought MS was gonna save us from our phones?
Two melting giants in a last effort to safe themselves..
A mass walk-out?
That’ll save their jobs…..
Ultimately, this move by Nokia benefits Microsoft and smaller Windows Phone 7 partners, but not Nokia. Nokia’s support gives Windows Phone 7 near-term legitimacy as a smart phone platform, to give it the traction it needs to get moving. Microsoft’s existing Windows Phone 7 partners already have products on the market, and this news will help sell those devices.
Nokia will probably take at least one year to release its first Windows Phone 7 product. By that time, it will just be another Windows Phone 7 phone entering the market, and Microsoft’s existing partners will be ready with their second-gen products. There will be nothing distinctive about Nokia’s new smartphone products.
If Nokia wants to get into tablets, and do it with Microsoft, it will have to wait until Microsoft completes work on the next version of Windows, and that could take another TWO years.